Anytown vs. Swan Lake

LESLEY VALDES

I try not to miss any of Randy Swartz’s Dance Celebration Series, even though it can mean passing up a program by the Pennsylvania Ballet. His selections are international; they’re often sharp, edgy, and more exhilaratingly danced. So I admit to expecting more from Danial Shapiro & Joanie Smith’s recent rock ’n roll premiere Anytown, Stories of America, than I did from Pennsylvania Ballet’s Swan Lake at the Academy of Music. Besides, I’d already seen choreographer Chris Wheeldon’s excellent Swan Lake premiere last season.

But after attending both Anytown and Swan Lake in October, I must admit I was wrong this time. I was disappointed by the Minnesota troupe’s opening night. I was encouraged and moved by the Pennsylvania’s second-go-round with Swan Lake.

It was fascinating to observe the season-openers in tandem. Both dances depend upon music of the vernacular. Bruce Springsteen is the primary source for Shapiro and Smith and of course Tchaikovsky for the fairy-tale ballet. Both works rely on narrative— pretty tangled narratives, for that matter. But Anytown’s stories felt neither real nor unreal, more sit-com than fantasy, a dance weighed down by its words: words that are not only heard on a soundtrack but projected, digitally, behind the dancers and occasionally on the stage floor.

Danial Shapiro and Joanie Smith are married and share choreographic duties in Minneapolis. In Anytown they’ve set 23 songs by musicians who are their old friends. Springsteen wrote nine ; his rocker wife Patti Scialfa composed three; Soozie Tyrell, who is Smith’s sister, contributed 11. Scialfa and Tyrell (for the un-hip like me) are members of Springsteen’s E-Street Band who've also gone solo; and the numbers you hear on Anytown come from their new CDs. They’re very good songs backing very good dancers, but much of the time the choreography just isn’t that interesting.

The stories compress the 1930s Dust Bowl period with the present day. Youth wear garb that’s mostly Gap tops and cropped pants, many are lonesome, unhappy sorts. Springsteen’s music doesn’t work as well as the women’s, probably his is too familiar. When you have songs as well known and as literal as Springsteen’s, the choreography had better be inventive— or, if it’s not, it shouldn’t go on as long as it does.

Swan Lake, by contrast, works because as the story is being danced out, the instrumental accompaniment sets our imagination free to roam. If someone were also singing about swans and sorcerers, we’d get bored pretty fast. In Anytown, my imagination shut down when I saw a bed racing across the stage (during “Maria’s Bed”) and the dying boy (in “Counting on a Miracle”). Banal theater spoils good dancing. The more modest numbers work better, like Scialfa’s “City Boys,” which proves a star turn for Jamie Ryan, a flirty female pursued by two fellows. So does Tyrell’s “White Lines,” but this time the company virtuoso is Laura Selles, whose forte is her floor work and those Wonder Woman shoulders: The dance features some remarkable spins and slides.

One effective ensemble is Tyrell’s “Square Dance,” a quintet about an abusive family. Here and elsewhere, Smith takes the role of a mother. The dance includes witty elbows and fisticuffs and sequential tumbles over a table and ironing board.. “Empty Sky,” a duo set to Springsteen’s homage to 9/11, is meant to be poignant but comes off as embarrassing. Smith in a rocking chair and Carl Flink behind her execute a series of unconventional lifts and spins, some which actually include that chair. It’s inventive, yes, but the casting was unintentionally dramatic: Both dancers are on the high side of 35 and chunky, so they keep the audience in suspense as to whether they can pull the dance off.

I liked Chris Wheeldon’s Swan Lake at the premiere last year; I like it even better now. The dancing conveyed more emotion and the production more security. Though Wheeldon’s ballet-in-a -ballet conceit is hardly original, it works: We’re in a 19th-Century French ballet studio where the principal dancer rehearsing Swan Lake becomes so immersed in the role that he confuses the fantasy with his own reality. This design, in combination with the dancers, suggests a canvas by Degas come to life— surely a kick for Philadelphians who studied the Museum of Art’s “Degas and the Dance” exhibit in 2002. (At the Swan Lake premiere, I felt certain Wheeldon must have known about the company’s collaboration with the Art Museum...but no, I was told, the concept was synchronicity.) And Wheeldon has assembled a terrific design team in Adrianne Lobel (set), Natasha Katz (lighting), Jean-Marc Puissant (costumes).

One big change concerns the role of Von Rothbart, the sorcerer who has transformed young maids into swans. In Wheeldon’s update, the role is doubled; it conveys a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde quality, because Rothbart is also seen as a wealthy patron— an abonne in French— of ballet dancers. It’s going to be tough to look at one of those Degas paintings again without imagining the motives of the men in top hats lurking behind the artist’s young dancers. At the premiere in 2004, Alexei Charov took the dual role of Rothbart and the patron, and he was menacing enough, but the duality wasn’t so emphatic. This time, because of Wheeldon’s theatrical changes, there was no mistaking it. Meredith Rainey’s performance (which he shared with Charov) was sinister as Rothbart, ominous as the patron.

In the October 8 finale , James Ady and Arantxa Ochoa took the roles of Prince Siegfried and Odette/Odile. Their partnership had tremendous appeal: His ardor matched her vulnerability, both straining to burst the bonds of classical restraint. What I didn’t know as I watched was that they were exhausted. Their roles were meant to be triple-cast and divided among two other couples: the very fine soloists Julie Diana and (guest artist) Yurie Yanovsky in one pairing, and Riolama Lorenzo and Zachary Hench in the other. But soon into the run, a bizarre set of individual circumstances left Ochoa and Ady holding the bag. By the final performance, this pair had danced the roles five consecutive times in four days.

What struck me was how ardently Ady gazed at Ochoa and how princely were his placements and his leaps— how entirely in character he remained. I was touched, too, by the expressiveness of Ochoa’s soaring backward lifts and high extensions. She seemed less captivating in the role of Odile— more of a cool and calculating siren.. Only upon later reflection did I realize the role fatigue must have played in her less-than-frenzied whipped turns.

Swan Lake’s third act was the biggest disappointment, though it began with a superb pas de quatre performed by Abigail Mentzer, Babette Vance, Alexander Iziliaev and Matthew Neenan. The character dances were the problem. I’ve rarely enjoyed them unless they’re spot-on. Wheeldon sets them so that Von Rothbart, under the guise of the patron (who sponsors this ballet-within the ballet), has brought along a cabaret to entertain the troupe, now enjoying a repast. . The Russian Dance turns into a striptease with Rothbart’s fellow patrons joining in. Amy Aldridge performed the dance well but with less finesse than Tara Keating displayed last season. The Czardas, frankly, were boring— danced uniformly with little character. To be sure, these dances had been taken on last-minute notice by Gabriella Yudenich and Alexei Charov when the scheduled dancers were injured. The Can Can (actually performed to a tarantella) was sloppy, notwithstanding its witty choreography and costumes. I couldn’t wait to get to the last act’s love story which was handled with delicacy.

The corps isn’t yet as precise as it can be. But it gets better all the time. Artistic director Roy Kaiser is making smart decisions for the company – including this Swan Lake, which led to the Edinburgh Festival this summer, the company’s first invitation to perform abroad and an invaluable experience. Wheeldon, a Brit himself, is a former soloist with the New York City Ballet and now its resident choreographer. He spent two weeks before the Philadelphians went to Edinburgh tweaking and clarifying Swan Lake, dropping some of the mime and the music. He’s one of the hot young Turks of modern ballet, and it will be good to see some of his other works brought here.

Lesley Valdes is the critic-at-large for WRTI, 90.1 FM She is the former classical music and dance critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Jose Mercury News. Her reviews are archived at www.wrti.org